The high-octane contest was in Uttar Pradesh where the BJP overcame the new found love between the Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party.

The Mayawati-led BSP's seat share in the House remains unchanged at five.

Till results last came in, the BJP was comfortably placed to win eight out of ten seats in UP.

SP and BSP had put up one candidate each. Akhilesh did succeed in delivering all the "surplus" SP votes, including that of his estranged uncle Shivpal Yadav, to BSP.

With 18 lawmakers, Mayawati's candidate needed the first preference votes of 37 to win a Rajya Sabha seat. UP CM Yogi Adityanath said, "BJP won nine out of nine seats it contested in UP".

On March 23, the battle for the tenth seat went down to the wire.

In Lucknow, BJP candidate Anil Agarwal's victory for the 10th seat was facilitated by cross -voting by BSP's Anil Singh and SP rebel Nitin Agarwal, as well as support from Vijay Mishra of Nishad Party and controversial Independent Amanmani Tripathi.

Challenges for the BSP candidate increased as BSP MLA Mukhtar Ansari and SP's Hari Om Yadav - both in jail - were not allowed to vote by courts.

In the house of 80, BJP's Samir Oraon secured 27 votes while Congress' Dhiraj Sahu managed to secure a berth for the Upper House. The opposition leaders soon used the opportunity to say that the BJP used all its tricks to keep a Dalit out of the parliament.

This clearly proves that some of the BJP's allies cross voted and it was because of this that Anil Agarwal got less than the allotted 28 votes.

Earlier, after receiving the winning certificate, a huge rally of party workers led newly elected Rajya Sabha Member Saroj Pandey to BJP state headquarters, where she participated in celebrations along with them.

Further, seven union ministers including Ravi Shankar Prasad and Prakash Javadekar were among those elected.

The BJP gained six seats on 15 March with one gain each in Haryana and Uttarakhand and gains on two seats each in Maharashtra and Rajasthan. Its first nominee Sameer Oraon won easily. V. L. Narasimha Rao and Anil Kumar Agarwal. Sources say two votes - one Bjp and one BSP were disqualified.

Marandi objected to the cross-voting even as the BJP pressed for its validity. Later, the party submitted a memorandum to chief election officer (CEO) Sanjiv Kumar, seeking countermanding of the elections due to "gross violations" by S Murthy, the returning officer and assembly secretary. The Congress, too, cast its votes entirely in favour of the BSP candidate.

BJP and its partners still faced difficulty, and sometimes embarrassment, in pushing their legislative agenda because the Opposition has the majority in the Rajya Sabha. Of them, the BJP won 17.

CPI-M candidate Rabin Deb, backed by the Left Front, lost. He is now a member of the Sharad Yadav's faction of Janata Dal (United). The BJP has also added weight to its presence in the state as Finance Minister Arun Jaitley is among the nine who were elected from the state. The BJP now has 58 members in the Rajya Sabha followed by 54 of the Congress. This decreased its count in the Upper House to 16 seats.

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